Tessa is 2!

It was Tessa's birthday yesterday.  She is two and let me tell you, she acts like it!  Yikes!  It's fun to see her grow and turn into a kid instead of a baby though.  Her language is really taking off, she is showing readiness for ditching the diapers and she eats and feeds herself which is nice for me.  She loves to play with Duplos and Legos and all sorts of other choking hazard type objects like marbles.  She loves to wear her jacket or a sweatshirt and she loves "clips" such as the ones on the high chair or in the stroller.  Fortunately, car seat clips are kid proof so she is still safe in there! 

 

It's hard to believe that these pictures were already taken two years ago. 

 

 

It makes me think of this poem that was on our flyer at MOPS a few weeks ago.  I had seen it before but it came at just the right time...

The Last Time

From the moment you hold your baby in your arms,
you will never be the same.
You might long for the person you were before,
When you had freedom and time,
And nothing in particular to worry about.
You will know tiredness like you never knew it before,
And days will run into days that are exactly the same,
Full of feeding and burping,
Whining and fighting,
Naps, or lack of naps. It might seem like a never-ending cycle.
 
But don't forget...
There is a last time for everything.
There will come a time when you will feed your baby
for the very last time.
They will fall asleep on you after a long day
And it will be the last time you ever hold your sleeping child.
One day you will carry them on your hip,
then set them down,
And never pick them up that way again.
You will scrub their hair in the bath one night
And from that day on they will want to bathe alone.
They will hold your hand to cross the road,
The never reach for it again.
They will creep into your room at midnight for cuddles,
And it will be the last night you ever wake for this.
One afternoon you will sing 'the wheels on the bus'
and do all the actions,
Then you'll never sing that song again.
They will kiss you goodbye at the school gate,
the next day they will ask to walk to the gate alone.
You will read a final bedtime story and wipe your
last dirty face.
They will one day run to you with arms raised,
for the very last time.
 
The thing is, you won't even know it's the last time
until there are no more times, and even then,
it will take you a while to realize.
 
So while you are living in these times,
remember there are only so many of them and
when they are gone,
you will yearn for just one more day of them.
 
For one last time.

It's hard to fathom sometimes that I will indeed miss these times but I know it's true!

 

It's crazy that all three of the kids look the same as babies! 

 

The transitions are happening all around.  Last Friday night we rearranged and Tessa now sleeps in a twin bed.  She was already in a toddler bed so it wasn't much of a transition at all. 

 

The toddler bed was converted back into a crib and is now in Ben's room.  He is excited to have Milo stay in his room but I haven't been able to handle moving him out of the bassinette yet!  He's just a baby!!!

 

Back to the birthday celebration, we didn't have a big party or anything.  My parents came on Saturday morning and we watched the NDSU football game and then went shopping and then had pizza and cake.  I decided to make a cake shaped like a Duplo block since Tessa has been into them lately. The sound of Duplos being dumped all over the floor is all too familiar!  That is as far as the party theme went but at least I tried!   This is the before:

 

More pictures of the finished product later...

 

Tessa got some nice presents.  We got her a stuffed Curious George since she likes the show as much as Ben does and sometimes they fight over his stuffed George.  Hers is wearing pajamas and holding a blanket which is really cute. 

 

She calls it "Jammie George". 

 

My mom found her some cute pajamas with "Paw Patrol" characters on them in addition to a new backpack with a kitten toy attached and a new blanket.  I somehow ended up with an Amazon Prime trial this month so at the last minute last week I ordered her two sets of Duplos. One is an ice cream cone set and one is a sandwich shop set.  They have been popular with both kids. 

 

 

Just what we need around here!  100 more small objects to litter the floors!

 

Here is Tessa snuggling "Jammie George". 

 

Ben had a rough time with seeing Tessa get presents.  My mom brought him a little something but still...He has learned about when his birthday is at school and I suppose by now he has seen his classmates have a few and he kept talking about when his birthday was coming and how he would let Tessa open one of his presents.  I bet you will, kid, I bet you will. 

So here is the cake.  It turned out OK only because my mom ended up frosting it for me after the sides started crumbling while I was trying to spread the frosting.  I put the cake pieces in the freezer to firm them up but I guess they weren't in there long enough.  Who knows.  The color I was trying to recreate was something matching those two bocks on the plate.  I put them there to prove that such colors exist in Duplo form.  In my youth they only came in the standard primary and secondary colors!  The color I ended up with was more of a 1990's mauve with a hint of grey to it.  Just what every toddler girl wants!  

 

How do you like that cake pedestal?  I had the idea at the last minute when I noticed how the cake was compact compared to the usual sheet cake.  My great grandmother was very devoted to cake plates apparently, and they appear in many old birthday photos from that side of the family.  It didn't matter if you were a teenager taking a break from working in the field during wheat harvest to pose for a birthday photo like my great uncle here,

 

 

 

or a young version of my grandpa posing on the steps of their newly built farmhouse,

 

or a two year old (also my grandpa).

 

 

If he had a cake pedestal on top of a regular pedestal for his 2nd birthday then I guess Tessa can have at least one pedestal! 

 

This particular pedestal plate was given to us by Justin's grandma who recieved it as a gift from his mom and dad years ago.  It's the first time I've used it!  Maybe I will rethink the shape of my cakes in the future so we can use it more!  In this picture we were trying to get Tessa to hold up two fingers.  She wasn't getting it, although she is really good at counting in general and can count into the teens. 

 

 

Last night, on her actual birthday I tried to get the three kids to pose together for a picture in their pajamas before we had some leftover mauve Duplo cake.  Miss Two Year Old wasn't having it though. 

 

 

 

The bro's were pretty cute though!

 

OK, we're done here!

Reflections on Veterans Day

It's Veteran's Day today, as everyone knows.  By some miracle the house is kind of quiet and "Saving Private Ryan" is on for an afternoon showing on AMC.  For some reason it is being shown from 1-4 p.m. instead of during prime time viewing with limited commercial interruption like it should be on Veteran's Day.  This evening they are showing both Karate Kid movies.  Huh?  "Saving Private Ryan" is one of my favorite movies that I could watch again and again.  It is kind of an odd addition to my list which mostly includes National Lampoon movies and 1990's/early 2000's high school movies.  If I could choose any movie that I would be proud to have been part of it would be this one.  Although, there isn't a single female in the cast except for Mrs. Ryan who doesn't have any lines and is only onscreen for about one minute (although it is a powerful scene at the Ryan farm in Iowa and the I can easily imagine the scene unfolding in the farmhouse I grew up in) and the secretaries in the typing room at the beginning. Right now it is the "calm before the storm" scene where the soldiers have found Ryan and they are in the ruined city of Romelle waiting for the battle to start where Ryan conjures the memory of his lost brothers and Tom Hanks' hand shakes in anticipation of what is coming. Very dramatic scene.

Today social media is filled with people paying tribute to the veterans of all ages in their families.  I'm not from a military family so all of the veterans I would honor served a long time ago.  My grandpa on my mom's side was a veteran of WWII.  He was still in high school when it started but served toward the end and my other grandfather was 14 when it ended so he didn't serve. Justin and I both have uncles and great uncles who served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.  On my side, our family's only casualty of war was my grandma's brother who died in the early days of Vietnam.  The family got word while my grandma was in the hospital giving birth to my aunt and they kept the information from her as long as they could.  

When I first started realizing the implications of war as a young student I was and still am moved by the patriotism and courage of the young people of the past.  They enlisted in masses to fight in WWII and they were barely older than I was..  I couldn't help but imagine the people I was in school with as soldiers and it made us all seem really privileged and safe.  I recall my social studies teacher giving the boys in the class the talk about how they had to sigh up for the selective service at the post office when they had their 18th birthday and it seemed outlandish that the country would have to resort to that ever again.  Well, that was 1999 and we all know what happened two years later which made the draft seem less of a relic of the past and more of a possibility.  Fortunately, I don't think it will happen and now...we are too old!  I looked it up a few months ago because something I saw on TV reminded me of it and I asked Justin if he was too old for the draft and he said he didn't know so I looked it up.  They answer is yes, unless there is another catastrophic world war where all the men in their 20s' and late teens are being used they could call people in their 30's.  But probably not.  And they start with 20 year olds.  I was looking at WWII statistics just a moment ago and more 20 year olds were killed in the war than any other age by far.  According to my random Google source, 14,095 twenty year olds died and only (ONLY...I use that word not to diminish their importance) 9,705 twenty-one year olds and 8,283 nineteen year olds died.  It must have been an unsettling time to be a 20 year old American. 

Anyway, today is a good day to think about such things because making that sacrifice is serious business.  What would have happened if tyranny (Hitler) won?  Thinking about all of his crazy ideas coming true is like imagining a horrifying post-apocalyptic movie plot.  The WWII veterans are diminishing in numbers at a very fast rate and the Vietnam guys are now becoming the old guys who fire the guns at funerals and march in parades to represent the Legion posts. While many of them shared their experiences and many stories are recorded to teach future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past (it's why we learn history in school, for all of those unenthusiastic students who ask why they have to learn this!) I have to wonder about the things they didn't every tell anyone about.  Thinking of them makes me feel kind of inadequate, like I could do more for others to benefit society to pay forward what they've given me but I don't know what would be enough. Nothing really compares.  And in that thought, I include not just men who fought but women who were "picking up the slack" at home, raising families alone, working in jobs they never imagined doing and making the best out of rationed goods.  It seems that they were a different breed and that a woman my age in those years was so much more of an adult than I am now.

Oooh...the scene at the end where the planes fly in and save the day just before Tom Hanks gets blasted by a tank is happening...goosebumps all over!

Newborn Pictures

We had newborn pictures taken for Milo a few weeks ago and received the disk last week.  They sure are cute, although I wish the older two would have been more cooperative.  They both smiled nicely for their individual pictures but for the shots with all three they were all over the place.  The following are my favorites. 

 

 

I love the ones taken with the braided rug!  So my style!

I can't help but feel guilty, especially when I see these, that we never did newborn pictures for Tessa.  Ben had them done at Sears, and they were not as cute as this, but at least he has them.  Oh well, I guess I have a few years before she realizes the slight! 

School Pictures

School picture day was always a fun but kind of stressful day  that rolled around every fall.  In the really early grades, I don't remember caring much about how I looked but it was always fun to wear a favorite outfit or fun necklace that day.  As we got older and entered the later elementary school grades I remember being stressed about my hair.  It was hard not to be with the precision skill that was required to fix the many ways we wore our bangs in the 90's!  If you were having one of those bad bang days and your stiff sky high wave or poodle curls were acting up or looking off kilter your picture day was ruined!  Sometimes there wasn't enough hairspray in the world...

In middle school and high school of course there was the dreaded acne to deal with.  I never had very bad skin but even one blemish was a problem.  Also, I am prone to red marks on my neck and chest if I scratch an itch or have any other minor contact with those areas so I was always worried about that.  And of course, every girl insisted with modesty that they looked terrible and would probably need retakes.  When the proofs came back every girl insisted she was getting retakes but no one ever got retakes!  Regarding boys, I don't remember any of them giving a crap or doing anything to go above and beyond in the grooming department for picture day.  Must be nice. 

I wish I had some school pics scanned of myself but of course I don't.  I have plenty of my parents and grandparents but none from my childhood!  I love to look at them though.  This custom is one that could, I suppose, become obsolete since we all have cameras in our pockets that are with us everywhere we go and digital photography makes it easy to take nice pictures of our kids whenever we want.  There is something special about these simple portraits though.  It's fun to see people at that age, trying to look their best in whatever fashions were popular at the time and see their hair and features as they change or stay the same through the years.

This one is quite special.

 

This is my grandma on my dad's side in 1st grade and the reason it is special is because it is the first known picture of her taken as a child.  She was 6th out of 7 kids, although I don't know if any of them had baby pictures taken, and like most families they didn't own a camera and couldn't afford a photographer in 1937.  So this was it!  It is so different now.  It makes us all seem downright vain.

 

This is my dad in some year of middle school so probably 1971 or 1972.  That shirt is very subdued compared to the huge collars, crazy prints and ridiculous bow ties that would fill the year book by the time he graduated in 1976 but it stands out to me because his hair is still straight. 

 

 My brother and sister and I all had straight hair until right around this age...sometime in late elementary school.  Around 6th grade is when my hair started flipping out in all directions at the end and by 7th it was fully curled.  The following newspaper clip shows my dad as a senior in high school in the fall of 1975. 

 

 

Whoa, right?  This was found in my great grandma's scrapbook recently.  That's not a perm. I wonder what happens in those years?  You could say hormones, but I would think then it would be different for girls and boys.  Also, it didn't happen to my aunt and uncle.  It was a strange recessive gene surfacing from the ancestry.  See, look...this is me in 5th grade...

And when I was 19...

It's crazy.  I wonder if it will happen to my kids?  I don't know if it would be lucky or not?  Now that my hair is straightening again (this HAS to be because of pregnancy and hormones) I kind of miss that wild mess that I used to have. 

 

My mom's dad was a high school teacher for 40 years so he had his photo taken on picture day sometimes.  I remember how most of my teachers would only sit every once and awhile for pictures so their photo in the yearbook would be the same for several years.  There were always those (always male) teachers who would use the same picture for, like, 20 years.  In the 90's their old portraits from 1978 were still being used!  It was funny.   

 

This is my grandpa's portrait which is clearly from the 1960's since it has some elegance to it and lacks polyester and crazy prints and the suit is not pastel blue or brown. I like the glasses.  It reminds me of my mom's favorite school picture day trauma where she had just started wearing glasses and was horrified by the sight of her pictures when they came back.  I wish I had that one scanned but I don't!

 

What all this reminiscing is leading to is the arrival of Ben's first school portraits this morning!  It is kind of strange how we are supposed to order them.  There are sheets in various sizes already printed and we can buy what we want and send the rest back in the envelope and order extras online if we want. 

 

 

They are pretty cute, I think, even if his smile is not the most natural!  I can't believe he took direction and put his hands in his pockets like that!  Although this is far from the first image of him on film (or memory card or whatever you would call it these days) it will still be one to treasure!

Halloween 2015

It's the week after Halloween.  What this means is there is a huge grocery bag of candy stashed on top of the refrigerator and I am spending a lot of time hiding in the corner of the kitchen trying to open candy bars and bags of mini M&M's without crinkling the wrappers and attracting the attention of Ben and Tessa who will come running at the first rip of a bag.  I am also probably discreetly trying to use the iPad without them spotting me and remembering it exists and instantly having screaming meltdowns at the sight of it.  Ugh.  Sometimes I wonder what my life has come to.  Here I am, a free adult in America, hiding the most mundane activities while two toddlers hold my TV hostage and whine whenever something animated is not playing.  My brain is turning to mush. 

Halloween was fun.  On Friday Ben had a party at preschool.  We were invited to send treats for the class.  This was my first time sending treats to school in what will probably be many years of such activities.  Times have changed from when my mom would sent pans of bars and homemade cookies. Due to food allergy issues and probably concerns about poisoning (who knows) treats must be store bought now so no baking cookies or cupcakes or anything like that.  I was going to be a slacker and just send mini kit kat bars or some other peanut free piece of candy but then my mom reminded me of a craft we used make when I was a child.  I guess "craft" is a stretch but this is it:

 

It's a lollipop with a Kleenex tied over it to look like a ghost.  We happened to have a bag of mini tootsie roll pops in the cupboard so I made up the right number of these and felt pretty pleased with myself. 

He ended up with a huge haul from school.  This is it, spread on the counter.  I was pretty surprised by the lengths some of his classmate's moms (or dads, but I'm guessing it was moms) went for this day.  There were plenty of single candy bars but there were also quite a few little goodie bags and creatively packaged treats. 

The scissors were not part of the party treats...

My favorites were these Halloween novelty rings and bracelet.  I liked them because they remind me of the prizes we used to get at the Halloween carnival we had in my hometown for elementary school kids. 

 

That friendship bracelet is so 90s!

 

There were several non-candy bags filled with little party favors like erasers, stickers, and notepads.

 

I appreciate what people are thinking with these sorts of treats but I am not opposed to a big candy binge a few times a year!  Ben liked this stuff though so I guess it was a good idea. 

And of course, someone went THERE...

 

The expensive organic health food granola bar.  This is a huge upgrade from the Walmart or Target brand chewy granola bars I buy all the time so thank you to whoever sent this.  I am impressed. 

 

There were also fun little toys that both kids are still playing with today which is quite a feat. 

 

The playdough is awesome.  Way more than I would have done, but a really cool idea. 

 

This was a real favorite.  It is a sticky pumpkin on a long sticky, stretchy string that you can fling at the wall or wherever and it will stick and then come off again and again. 

 

 

When I was in elementary school my dad played softball and every year the team went to a state tournament in Jamestown.  We always stayed at whatever hotel is right by the interstate across from the tiny little mall they have there and it had a grassy lawn in the back off the pool area.  From what I remember, the adults all sat around on this lawn drinking and joking around when the team wasn't playing in games and all of the kids (there were many of us) roamed around and swam and walked to the mall mostly unsupervised.  There was a $.25 junk machine in the hotel that dispensed these little sticky things and all of the kids ended up with them and we were always flinging them all over the hotel.  Fun times were had by all.  Ben flung his around so many times after the party that it broke that same day. 

 

Here he is in his costume before school.  He is a football player.  We had a set of youth xs shoulder pads that we were going to have him wear but they were way too big and also we borrowed a Bison helmet but we hadn't picked it up yet on Friday morning. 

 

Saturday night we costumed up (the kids, not the parents!) and walked around our cul de sac and then drove around to visit friends. Tessa wore the bear costume Ben wore when he was 2 and a little Halloween skirt my aunt made her. 

 

Ben had his helmet for the night.

Milo was a pumpkin!  He slept the whole time we were out.  We left around 5:45 and returned home around 10:00 (our last stop was at a friend's house and they had a bonfire going!) and he never woke up once.  He never left his car seat.  It made the evening easier for us although it would have been fun to show him off!

 

 After the other kids went to bed I took a few pictures of just Milo since he was very alert after his long nap. 

 

And of course, we had to get Allan into his costume as we do every year!  He is more amicable to the costume every year! 

 

Ok, time to eat some more candy!

Upgrades, upgrades

Big news around here...we are getting a...king size bed!!!  It was delivered today.  We probably would have purchased one with our bedroom set in 2009 but in the old house (I still think of you often, old brick house!) the bedroom wasn't big enough for one.   Justin is always having some back related issue and this recent pregnancy was physically rough for me and every night was torturous.  Also, we are not exactly petite people.  After our weekend in Montana in August when we spent two nights in hotels with king beds we woke up not in pain and wanting to murder each other we decided to get one.  Justin called the furniture store and found out that we could still get the matching headboard and frame that goes with the rest of the furniture and the order was made. 

 

Well, a frame that matches our furniture was delivered but it wasn't the same as the old one.  Furniture stores...they always have some sort of drama up their sleeve.  I've heard about it happening so many times.  Justin stopped there yesterday afternoon after tilling our garden and the person there was understanding but said he would know more when the manager was there today and the woman who sold it to us is on leave now.  I kind of like this one actually.  The metal bars match the drawer pulls on the dressers.  What we don't like is the fact that the headboard is really low so with pillows you can't really even see it.  So who knows what will happen with this.  At least we have the mattress officially in the house and can sleep on it!

 

 

You can see the old one in this picture.  The two are definitely related and have the same style of legs and are the same color.

 

 

I miss this old place!  From my occasional drive byes it looks like those curtains are still there. 

 

I have been searching for sheets and blankets to outfit this new monster of a bed.  It is quite and investment because of the yardage involved.  I never really paid attention to how expensive king bedding is.  I finally settled on this duvet and sham set from my beloved source of domestic fantasies, Pottery Barn. 

 

 

It has all the colors that I needed to match.  The walls are grey and we are not painting anything anytime soon so it had to match those.  There is some light green, which is the color that is prominent in the wall hangings so I wanted them to still match and there is a lot of blue and turquoise, which I always gravitate toward.  Now the yellow lamps will look kind of odd so I will probably be on the hunt for new lamps. 

 

I am not going to post a picture of the finished product.  One reason is that the lightweight duvet filling blanket I ordered from slow as a snail flash sale site Zulily isn't here yet and may not arrive at all.  I received a message last week saying there was a delay and if it doesn't ship by the end of October they will just give me a refund.  I don't want a refund.  I want my 70% off down alternative blanket but what can I do? The other reason is that our room looks EXACTLY like the one from the Pottery Barn design team so you don't even need to see ours!  Just like in the picture, I always keep a vase of fresh flowers on my night stand!  I cleverly conceal the diaper rash cream, baby wipes and various tangled charging cords that I use at night these days hidden at all times because WHO can live with such clutter?  NOT ME!  And I always keep the space under the bed clear because of the principles of Feng Shui.  I have plenty of other places to store my duffel bags and box full of old CDs. 

Theme Days

It is a special week at Ben's preschool this week.  I can't remember the name exactly and I threw away the flyer about it but it is sponsored by the United Way and there is a bake sale and fundraisers and that sort of thing.  The kids also are dressing up each day to match different themes.  Monday was "crazy hair" day.  He just had his hair cut the day before Milo was born so it is still quite short so I wasn't sure what to do to make his hair crazy.  On Monday morning I remembered that Justin used up the endless bottle of generic men's hair gel that we have had for years so I had to use some pomade balm of mine that smells tropical and beachy.  I did a center Mohawk and told him it was spikes like a dinosaur so that made him happy and amicable to having his hair fixed since, on a daily basis, having his hair fixed causes screaming and fighting. 

This is the best picture I could get in the morning rush.  Yes, that is the glowing blue light of an animated PBS show cast on his face. 

Here he is after school.  I guess my pomade doesn't have very much holding power. 

 

Friday is, of course, Halloween costume day.  I was disappointed that pajama day was yesterday, on a day when he didn't have school.  That would have been fun for him since he has so many fun pajamas with Paw Patrol, Lightning McQueen and the snowman from Frozen on them. It would have also been easy for me. 

 

These theme days have reminded me of one of my favorite memories of my school days which was Homecoming week.  We had theme days like this.  Monday was always pajama day.  Most of the girls would get up and get ready as usual and then put on some cute pajamas.  I know I would usually do that and change out of whatever crappy oversized basketball camp t-shirt I slept in.  Friday was always school colors/pep rally day but the other three days were voted on by the student council every year.  We had all sorts of crazy days including toga day, inside out day, formal dress up day and opposite sex day. This day probably is not allowed anymore but the guys all really had fun with it.  I think men secretly enjoy having an excuse to wear women's clothes and act silly.  In college there was a Mr. NDSU pageant every year and the lip sync portion was generally 90% devoted to imitating female singers!  I can think of countless examples of this phenomenon, including the girls basketball team dads wearing the oversized 90's cheerleading sweaters and doing a routine at our send off rally when we went to the state tournament where my dad and most of the other larger dads pinned two skirts together and one even wore a skirt on each leg...yes that happened...and my brother and his friends "losing a bet" or some nonsense and getting girl makeovers from my sister and her friends where they ended up with full clown makeup and wearing my mom's old dresses from the 1970s complete with shoes and pantyhose.  There was also "grunge day", although we all dressed so bad in the 1990s that I don't know why that was even a theme day!  It could have been "wear your normal crummy t-shirts, baggy jeans, flannel shirts and sweatshirts that are 4 sizes too big" day. 

 

One year, the student council could not agree on could not agree on what to designate as the theme for the final undecided day and a senior girl said with a shrug, "How about we just have 'Wacky Day' and everyone can dress in whatever theme they want?".  I was at that meeting and it was like she spoke the words of a genius and a new tradition was born.  Now, students could engage in any craziness they wanted.  If you felt like wearing a toga but there was no toga day that year?  You could still wear a toga!  You wanted to wear your older sister's prom dress from the 80's but you were a guy and there was no opposite sex day that year?  You could wear your sister's prom dress!  I remember being in college and calling my mom and asking what my brother and sister wore for Wacky Day and she reported that my brother wore a pair of my size 8 tight fitting boot cut jeans and a Ford Dealership work shirt and was handing out pens in honor of the near retirement salesman who worked there.  That was perfect for wacky day! 

 

Oh, how I wish I had my high school photo albums here but they are at my parent's house.  There is photographic evidence of everything I spoke of here.  There is a whole roll of film devoted to my senior year homecoming week and let me tell you...no one is wackier than seniors!  It's probably a good thing those pictures don't exist in digital format.  There is also photos of the dad's cheerleading squad and my brother and his friends as middle school aged women wearing polyester mini dresses sewn by my mom in 1974 and high heels.  I never did see a picture of my brother wearing my jeans but I'm sure one is out there somewhere. 

 

Oh, the fun that lies ahead for my kids.  I hope fun things like theme days don't end up being taken away because of someone complaining because it makes them offended somehow.  I know my old school took theme days away from the elementary students because it is distracting and to give them something to look forward to when the get to jr. high and high school which I suppose makes sense but I'm sure they wish they got to be like the older kids like we always did.   And the student council used to keep track of which high school students didn't dress up and at the end of the week pep rally they held "court" where those students had to do something embarrassing.  That was banned because one student's parents complained about it being hazing.  Oh, the big "H" word...I do NOT condone actual hazing activities such as physical violence, forcing people to drink alcohol, offensive racial songs or activites or doing things that are dangerous AT ALL.  I was in a sorority and Justin was in a fraternity and, although you often hear news stories about the a$$holes who do those activities and end up really hurting people and making us all look bad I can say without hesitation that we did NOT do that stuff in our houses and we would never have hurt anyone and no one every hurt me or made me uncomfortable.  It was almost reversed and when we joined we were told repeatedly that if anything made us uncomfortable to leave, speak up, or anonymously call the national headquarters or the student activities coordinator on campus to report it.  And this was just about singing songs and joking around.  The older members said their "hazing", before all such activities were banned completely involved nothing more than wearing silly outfits and running around fraternities and campus at night and I always though that sort of thing seemed like it would have been fun.  The homecoming court of law in high school involved really silly things like drinking Powerade from a baby bottle and shooting free throws with a blindfold on.  Oh, the horror!  I really do feel like younger people are missing out on the joys of life by everyone being offended by everything. 

 

Well, anyway, that was quite a tangent.  Today was "inside out and backwards" day at preschool and I put Ben's shirt on backwards but he didn't like it but he did wear a pair of sweatpants inside out so you can see the pockets.  Hilarious. 

 

Guess what else I saw when I pulled out of the garage this morning...Yes indeed, the first snow!  It's already melted and this is perfectly normal for late October, but still...dang.

Milo at Two Weeks Old

As everyone always says as they realize time has passed, I can't believe the baby is two weeks old already.  At this time two weeks ago I was sitting on a pillow that was covering the metal joint in the middle of my hospital bed, enjoying my room service complete with cheesecake and still shocked that we had a baby the night before. 

 

He's doing fine.  His sleeping is like a newborn with wakeups in the 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.  hour and also, if I have already gone to bed, during the midnight or 1:00 a.m. hour.  He slept for a six hour stretch a few nights ago and I thought it must be too good to be true and it was but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel of fractured sleep. 

 

I keep waiting for my to lose my mind with three kids since I have heard that having a third can be a tipping point to total chaos but I have also heard that it's not any harder than having two.  I guess it depends on the family.  I really haven't found it much harder than having two.  We have had friends and neighbors bring us meals and since Ben is in school most mornings and Tessa naps in the afternoon I have lots of time with just two.  I have another mom walking Ben into school so I don't have to unload the other kids which is really nice.

 

 The worst days are the days when he doesn't have school because we can't really go anywhere and I get really bored being stuck in the house all day.  We can't go to the Y until Milo is two months old and I am not ready to go to public places like stores yet.  Tessa is in the worst phase of toddlerhood when it comes to shopping and won't sit or stay in a cart or any kind of restraint and likes to run off in the opposite direction of where we are going.  I know this phase will pass but for now she is better off staying away from Walmart, the mall or any other place like that.  I did take all three to MOPS this morning because there is no school today because of the state teacher's convention and it went fine. 

 

I think the main reason I don't feel that different is because I don't have time to think about anything!  I remember changing Ben's diapers when he was a newborn and becoming overwhelmed at the thought of the years of diaper changing that were ahead of me and terrified of being left alone with Ben and Tessa when she was a newborn.  And of course, I had to process the loss of my youth and freedom.  But I have accepted all of those things a long time ago and have hardly thought of them lately. Well, maybe I do when an old favorite song from college surfaces on my playlist or when I step outside on a crisp autumn night and suddenly transport back to 2005 and recall myself walking to the bar with a slight buzz with my best friends but I am usually snapped out of those little reveries quickly!  Also, now my sister and my cousins and most of my friends have had and are having babies so I don't feel like I am so different. 

 

So, so far, so good.  That sentence looks weird.  I wonder if that is a correct way to write a sentence?  Here are a few pictures from the last few days. 

 

Here he is in his Halloween pajamas.  They are size 3 months but I realized that there weren't may days left in October so I better get them in the rotation and they actually fit pretty well.   He's growing!

I like this picture because he is so alert.

I found this outfit in the newborn box.  It was Ben's "coming home" outfit but I didn't think he would mind if his brother wore it!

 

Tessa loves to sit in the car seat and other baby holding apparatuses.  Here she even snuggled into it with her blanket.